Hi All, I was wondering if any of the theory crafters here can advise me on this issue.
How important/relevant are autoattacks with the MM Hunter? There’s a talent that gives extra damage and crit to AA and I was wondering how important that talent would be.
I tend to press my attack powers all the time so I’m not sure when an autoattack would actually even go off. Or do they go off regardless of what other attacks you cast?
When we were not stacking Haste, it wasn’t really relevant. Now that we should, we’d get a much better benefit from Auto.
My educated guess is that they want it to be something we can improve with gear.
Ah yeah, good point. Our stat priority has changed a bit.
MM Hunters are unique in the way that even while ‘casting’ abilities they still autoattack. There’s no animation, but you can see white damage popping up as you’re channeling Aimed Shot, for example. This means you are constantly autoattacking no matter what you’re doing, and you can get procs in the middle of doing other stuff.
Our attack damage has been buffed by a whopping 600% for 12.1, and that’s a big deal! White crits can hit for like 30k or more. Consider it a free, big damage DoT. The only thing Dark Ranger got as a buff this season is Bleak Arrows buffing autoattack damage by an extra 100%, giving you 700% autoattack damage that does Shadow damage, bypassing armor.
On that token, however. it’s not something you should build for. Obsidian Arrowhead buffs autoattack damage by 25% and crit rate by 15%. 625% isn’t enough of a jump from 600%, and the extra crit that only benefits autoattacks really isn’t worth it. Also, the mid-tier talents for MM are among their most important talents, and you need enough points to invest in Kill Shot and/or Explosive Shot.
My own research, in addition to every source I could find, still says Crit/Mast/Vers/Haste is the stat priority, so we shouldn’t be stacking Haste.
I couldn’t confirm this is the case. There’s no real reason to stack Haste ever. Aimed Shot requires an obscene amount of Haste to speed up the cast and you do it at the cost of it doing damage. The only thing it will benefit are autoattacks and, as mentioned, investing in autoattacks isn’t really worth it.
I’d say treat the autoattacks as nice bonus damage while you’re doing other things, and don’t consider Obsidian Arrowhead or stacking a trillion Haste just to make those autoattacks better.
Autos do a lot this season and yeah they ignore cast
Ahah. OK, that is exactly what I was wondring about. Thanks for that info.
That is exactly the talken I was referring to. I was thinking of dropping it and taking something else. Atm, it’s toss up with Kill Shot, but as you said, it doesnt really shine without going down further.
You think? I might have agreed with you previously because of so many LnL procs but now that we lost it from Explosive Shot, I’d have thought it would move up a bit.
I had written a thread about making sure procs and more thereof get discharged without overstacking. That’s the main thing. Having a substantial Haste to smooth out the rotation(I’m thinking 18-24%). I went with (8+1)% for a long time and I thought to myself it needs to be more than that now. Thankfully we can get 2-4% from talents.
Maybe Blizz understands how worthless Haste has been for us and wanted to change that, like, after 6 years. Edit: And finally, gobbos can really cash in, literally.
Was funny as Haste was our dump stat for most of TWW. In fact, we were using the cursed ring enchants to LOSE even more haste 
Well, with Precise Shots no longer modifying (slowing) our autoattack speed, it’s actually pretty fast now! Lemme log on real quick and I’ll see my speed and current Haste. At ilvl 292.
14% Haste (449), 2.6 sec autoattacks. Going to 12% Haste makes it 2.7, and that’s not getting anywhere near the caps. You’d need a hefty investment in Haste to make it around 2.0, though, and that comes at a heavy cost to damage since, as MM, our crit damage is heavily modified by our crit stat and despite Aimed Shot not being a guaranteed crit anymore, we still want those juicy big numbers.
Like the autoattacks, you’ll need a lot of Haste to benefit Rapid Fire and Aimed Shot as well: Rapid Fire can cast faster while Aimed Shot casts faster and recharges faster, but neither of these changes are very significant unless you have a lot of Haste. By default it’s 2 sec cast time for Rapid Fire and with 14% Haste it’s…1.8. Aimed Shot has so much passive CD reduction that the recharge time bonus is hardly worth mentioning, and with 14% Haste the cast time is still a whopping 2.2 seconds.
There just isn’t enough bang for the buck for stacking Haste, and I never really found L&L procs to be a problem without a lot of Haste now.
They went back on that change! Sort of. It’s a choice talent between it and Unstable Trigger. It’s called Tactical Reload now. Explosive Shot can go back and give L&L like it used to. Sentinel also has Chakram that also gives L&L.
Windrunner Quiver was reworked to buff Rapid Fire (which hits really hard after the recent changes) and also give Rapid Fire a chance for a L&L proc as well, which is really handy since you can empower Aimed Shot with Bulletstorm, and just instantly send it out. So there’s a lot of options to help out the proc rate beyond attacking faster!
Some Haste is good! Like the Saptor Paw from S1 was one of my favorite trinkets because it gave a little haste, but had a crit-focused proc effect which went off all the time and gave a ton of Agility. The spec is feeling fine at that 14% mark I’m currently at, but going beyond that seems wasteful and starts eating at damage.
There’s probably a sweet number, I’m guessing around maybe 10%, but any more than that seems detrimental.
That’s like getting a Rolls Royce for your late 1980’s jalopy.
Eh, that wouldn’t be necessary. Autos just help bring up the rear.
That’s the answer I needed. Thank you. I will gladly roll with a 14% hard cap, which is not the hardest thing to get.
FFS, I didn’t see that. Guess I’ll be redoing my talents again. Method’s guide was fine but I still prefer ES giving LnL. Suits me better. Thanks for heads up.
off topic a bit, but I like how seemingly chill the other 2 hunter specs are on the forums, the surv hunter forum posts are basically putting a bunch of ppl who think they’re the smartest person in the room into one room then letting them just go at each other.
Global cooldown reduction in PVP is a big deal.
I dunno, wasn’t pretty warm and toasty when we had the whole MM Pet thing a couple of years ago. Was not a lotta chill there
ahh, I didnt play hunter during those times, must of been a warzone then.
The first thread blew up to 1500 posts in the first 24 hours I think. Was exciting time to be alive
That goes back as far as Legion. A certain goblin of Barthilas can tell you all about it. Untold thousands of posts. I’d say it was the greatest controversy that ever happened in WoW.
Ignore this guy, he has no idea what hes talking about and is an extremely mentally unwell delusional narcissist who thinks the guy who literally writes the Hunter guides for WoW Head and Icy Veins is wrong and should defer to him and he thinks Methods theorycrafters are trash and that both should speak to him for approval before posting.
You dont want to stack Haste, its literally our worst stat, you want to stack Crit → Mastery → Vers → Haste in that order.
If you want ACTUAL advice that wont leave you in a crappy position getting rejected from groups for poor damage then look up either Icy Veins or WoW Head for everything you need to know from gearing to stat priorities to buffs to enchants as well various talent builds for different scenarios (Raid Single Target, Raid Cleave, Mythic+, Delves) as well as advice on things worht considering as tweaks to the default builds.
I use Method and WowHead. Though, I am more tending towards Method nowadays
Oh, nooooo…I don’t think that is. THEY ARE. I can think whatever I want to think.
You’d think a certain Dane would have caught it? Nope.avi, and boy howdy, I’m glad I went -$16.23 because I got to be the first to blow the whistle. No one at the top knows everything right about this class/spec, and worse than that, everyone else takes everything they say as gospel. It’s all borked up.
Talking about talents that haven’t existed as live for months…and talents that can skipped for something way better(shakes head).
There can be no apology. It’s just blatant wrong and blatant fail. There’s still MMs that QQ even now about things they don’t understand, because the blind leads the blind.
I’ve done MM for a long time, and did some things no one else in the world ever did. It’s just depressing; Method actually plays semiprofessionally. Before and after City Attacker-Solo, I actually worked 2 jobs plus a seasonal, and I did D&D 5e on the side. Nobody would ever know just by looking at me I was better than Method at this.
They’re going to announce Warlords next month, so I’ll have that to look forward to. Better that I go back to when I first started as MM than to just obliterate other MMs in Retail in a game I can’t lose anymore.